


Two roads diverged

by RurouniHime



Series: Two Roads Diverged [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Compliant, Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Clint Barton's Farm, Clint Has Issues, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hot Chocolate, M/M, Missing Scene, Phil Coulson is dead, Pining, Pre-Slash, Regret, Sharing a Bed, Steve Rogers Feels, Team Bonding, as far as Clint knows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-10
Updated: 2015-05-10
Packaged: 2018-03-29 20:14:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3909172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>His eyes haven’t adjusted and it’s too dark to see Steve’s expression.</i> </p><p>In which there is a farm, a porch at night, and two kinds of grief.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two roads diverged

**Author's Note:**

> My interpretation of a significant part of Clint's existence, post-Loki. **Notice there are two Clint Barton pairings tagged. Also notice that there is no infidelity tag. At most, it's emotional infidelity.** Also, Major Character Death IS tagged, but that's because of a misconception. See the end for further blabbing about MCU canon compliance.

Cinnamon hot chocolate before bed. It’s been Clint’s go-to since he was fumbling his training bow in the big top’s tent. Even his nights in the Tower have been chaperoned into sleep by a steaming cup of spicy goodness, and Tony has been very accommodating. 

Yes, he’s missed some nights. But that just makes the ones in which he can partake all the better. The cherry on top tonight is that he’s partaking at home again.

Clint shrugs on a flannel shirt and takes his mug out onto the veranda. Twilight has submerged into night, and the crickets rub a symphony from the long grass. Since he started working for SHIELD, his nightly tradition has undergone some alteration—Phil taught him to use a dollop of clotted cream in the bottom of the mug—but the delivery is always the same: both hands cupped, nose held an inch over the mug’s rim. Savor the aroma, and then take that first perfect sip.

He’s mid swirl, a delicious coat over tongue and teeth, when he notices Steve at the far end of the porch. It’s dark where he’s standing, looking out over the fields. He’s wearing one of Clint’s sweatshirts, a dark, fleecy zip-up that Clint refuses to wash in an attempt to save the softness of the inside layer. 

Clint eyes it and shrugs. Hell, he may continue to not wash it after Steve’s done with it. It’d be worth it.

“Nice night,” he says, coming up on Steve’s right. The house is pretty quiet: Bruce and Tasha hit the hay ages ago, though Clint suspects they’re sitting up in bathrobes, yammering like school kids. Tony’s in the guest-room-nee-den, doing whatever he does when he doesn’t have tech to play with. Clint and Laura put the babies to bed at nine, and since then, Clint’s been waiting for that delicate moment when the night air will hit his cocoa-heated lips and give him goosebumps down his arms.

Steve nods. “I can see why you chose this place.”

Clint shrugs. “Good enough for government work.” He grins, but his eyes haven’t adjusted and it’s too dark to see Steve’s expression. “Want some cocoa?”

Steve’s response is late in coming. “Thanks, no.”

“It’s good,” Clint tempts, dragging the second word. Steve doesn’t say anything, and Clint goes back to watching the night. The stars are insanely bright out here; the Milky Way curves overhead, sharper out of the corner of his eye, and great shadows of trees rock back and forth on the fence line. While he’s here, he’ll have to cut that grass out front, but they’ve both been putting it off because they like the crickets in the evening. There are a few worn spots in the paint along the porch railing, too. Maybe he can get one of the others to give it another coat before they leave.

His eyes end up on the railing itself, the lighter paint severed by the dark shape of Steve’s hands. Clint lets his eyes finish adjusting. It takes him almost a minute to realize that Steve is gripping the wood and releasing. Gripping. Releasing. Over and over.

“Hey,” he says, and isn’t sure how best to continue. “You okay?”

Again, Steve doesn’t answer. His posture is too stiff for the evening’s calm. Leftovers from his bout with Maximoff, no doubt. Clint doesn’t envy any of them, and has no wish to shoulder that particular burden again. A whole slew of nights where he didn’t get his cocoa, he gripes inwardly, because that’s easier than dredging up the full enormity of what happened with Thor’s brother. He’s not a cowardly man but that… Clint shivers, rolling his shoulders.

“It’ll pass,” he offers, finally, and is proud of himself for being constructive. “It’ll take a while, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not forever.”

Steve looks at him, and the ambient light glints in his eyes enough to display confusion. His hands tighten around the rail again and release.

“I don’t…” Steve pauses. “…think I can share a bed with Tony.”

Oh. Not Maximoff at all. It catches Clint off guard, more disconcerting than warranted. Sure, there’s been tension. There’s always tension. The two of them weren’t exactly hugging it out over the wood pile today. But he hadn’t thought… He frowns down at his cocoa, trying to think of a delicate—and constructive—response. “I didn’t think things were that bad between you.”

Steve huffs out what should be a laugh. But Clint can see better now. Steve’s mirth is almost wild, eyes wide and unfocused as he stares into the night. His jaw is one rigid line, tendons standing out in his neck. Clint’s stomach performs a slow roll.

He feels unsteady, and it’s because… It’s because he’s never seen Steve Rogers this unsettled, he decides. The man can toss his damn bike at a crowd of Nazis who are milliseconds away from running him down, take a horde of Chitauri apart with his bare hands and not blink. Even, apparently, flatten an elevator full of trained SHIELD agents with one arm clamped to a wall. Clint is not used to this. Steve hunches over, braces against the railing and hangs his head. He smiles and gives another weak huff. 

And Clint’s thoughts take a wholly unexpected turn.

“Wait.” He looks out into the night, wets his lips and looks back, cocoa forgotten. “Wait a minute.”

“What do you do, Clint,” Steve says lowly, “when your partner… When you can’t really find those boundaries anymore?”

“I, uh.” He puts his mug down before he drops it, and still it teeters on the railing. Shit, he was more right than he realized about the trouble with sharing rooms. He glances around, trying to find the stability that being home always lends him, and then faces Steve. “Really? Stark?”

Steve’s jaw tightens even further. If he grips that railing any harder, Clint will have more to worry about than paint.

“How long?” He’s genuinely curious. Genuinely troubled. Steve and Tony fight like they share a brain, at least when Tony’s not gallivanting around as a one-man team. And he’s done a lot less of that lately. Even this thing with Ultron, Bruce knew about, helped put in motion. Clint stretches back, searches for a memory where Cap and Iron Man’s rapport had strained itself raw, but there’s nothing. So either this is fairly new, or Steve’s a hell of a lot cagier than Clint gave him credit for.

“A while,” Steve says shortly.

A hell of a lot more compartmentalized, Clint revises. He wonders if Tasha knows, and suddenly—certainly—doubts it. There’s something here that Steve has shown to no one.

“Look, I can, uh.” He touches Steve’s arm. It’s weirdly comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time, to express sympathy in so intimate a way. “I can try and find you another mattress.” The couches are all too short for Steve, and they scoured the house for all available cushioning already, but maybe in the barn—

Steve exhales at length, shoulders falling. His jaw ticks once and he shakes his head. “No, that’s… No.” His next sigh is resigned. “It’s late. Too late to ransack the place.”

Clint waits, sensing that it’s time to stay quiet, and for a long while, Steve squints into the darkness, looking like he’s preparing for battle. Turning over all the details, cementing strategy in his mind. Clint usually views this stage with anticipation, and strangely, it’s not all that different now. For all the discomfort in Steve’s revelation, there’s an acuteness as well, a strike deep into the thrum of Clint’s bones.

Something soft and overlooked hums just over the horizon, and Clint can’t quite see it.

There’s no benefit to asking, but the words find Clint before he can get his walls up. “Does he know?” Because Tony hasn’t given away an inkling, and if he is aware, then the awkwardness of sharing a bed—

“No.” On that point, Steve sounds sure. It’s hard to tell how he feels about it.

Does Steve want Tony to know? Clint keeps that question under wraps; he’s asked it of himself too many times to ignore it now. He feels suddenly like he barely knows his teammate, his _commander,_ but it’s not the void of betrayal. Rather… 

Well. Understanding. A choice he ultimately hadn’t been forced to make.

It’s funny how life ends up making the decisions instead. Clint stares at his cooling mug of cocoa, at the pale swirl of clotted cream melting across the surface. “Can’t help who you love.”

It was the wrong time, then. Wrong everything. It wouldn’t have gotten anyone anywhere, least of all Clint, and at the very top of that mountain, he’d been the cause of the avalanche. He’d driven the tragedy, and though he hadn’t hefted that scepter, he’d still ended up robbing them all. In the end, there were no words that would have changed anything. 

But there are things he wishes _to hell and back_ that he’d said. The chocolate turns bitter against his teeth, and the old pain flares, fierce, then recedes. 

He wishes he’d said them to Phil. Even though nothing would ever have come of it.

“Gonna be okay?” He wonders if Steve notices his hoarseness. He takes another sip and this time the cocoa slides down his throat like gentle fingers. That’s it, though; he won’t be ready for bed for hours yet.

Steve pulls the sweatshirt closer around him, crosses his arms over his chest, and for an instant looks like a guy facing the road life insists on pushing him down. There’s a word for it, Clint thinks, and that word is ‘troubled.’ “Of course.”

He nods a goodnight—and a faint smile—to Clint and heads indoors, still curved in on himself. As the screen clunks back into place and the sound of the crickets swallows everything else, Clint props his elbows against the railing and sighs.

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> As far as this story is concerned, it is both Age of Ultron and Agents of SHIELD compliant, as Clint has no idea that Phil Coulson is in fact still alive. 
> 
> Title is from _The Road Not Taken_ by Robert Frost.


End file.
